Sitemaps 101 - Back To SEO School

Sitemaps are without doubt one of the most often ignored andundervalued aspects of search engine optimization. You've probablyspent a huge amount of time working on pages of original content,keyword density and getting incoming links but never once spared athought for a sitemap for your new creation.

What is a sitemap?
Putsimply it's a page or pages that contain a list of and link to all theother documents on your site. This is useful on two levels:

1. Your visitor can quickly reference all the documents on your site to find exactly what they're looking for.

2.Search engine spiders can also quickly find and index every single pageof your site in the least amount of time. The SEO benefits of using asitemap far considerable and should not be ignored.

This is awin-win situation for you, your website visitors and the searchengines. Put simply you're nuts if you've not included a sitemap aspart of your overall website promotion strategy.

The good newsis that it's never too late to start. You can create a sitemap pagetoday but there are some rules to creating an effective sitemap thatyou need to follow:

Your sitemap must only be linked to fromyour homepage and no other page. Why? You want the search enginespiders to find this link directly from your homepage and follow itfrom there. Your sitemap MUST NOT be linked to from every other page ofyour site. Also from a Google Pagerank point of view only linking toyour sitemap from your homepage can also "funnel" PR quickly to pagesall over your site.

If you have a large website of 50 pages ormore limit the number of pages listed on your sitemap to a maximum of30. This is to prevent your sitemap from being misinterpreted as a linkfarm by the search engines. It also makes the sitemap a lot easier forreal human visitors to read through. Limiting the number of pageslisted on each sitemap to 30 might mean splitting your sitemap over 5,10 or 20 pages. This has to be done and the long term benefits areworth it. Bear in mind that if you do create a 20 page sitemap you'vejust created an extra 20 pages of content for your website!

Makeabsolutely sure that each of your sitemap pages links to the next. Ifyou have 10 sitemap pages in total then each of those needs to link toevery other sitemap page. Otherwise both visitors and search enginespiders will find a broken link, lose interest and go away.

Testyour sitemap thoroughly. Make sure all the links works. Make sure it'seasy to read and navigate through. Your sitemap is there to assist yourvisitor and not confuse them.

How should you structure yoursitemap? The following tips must be adhered to in order for your siteto gain the maximum possible benefit from having a sitemap.

1. The title of each sitemap link should be keyword rich and link directly back to the original page.

2.Include 10 - 20 words of text from the original page of contentunderneath the relevant sitemap link. This creates more content forsearch engine spiders and human visitors can see exactly what each pageis about in advance of clicking.
uman visitor benefit is that they can see what the pages is about in advance.

3.Ensure that the look and feel of your sitemap page is consistent withthe rest of your site. Use the same basic HTML template you used forevery other page of your site.

So now you understand theimportance of building a sitemap for your website. There is workinvolved but the long term benefits for your websites far outweigh anyeffort you have to make right now.

Sitemaps 101 - Back To SEO School
Sitemaps are without doubt one of the most often ignored and undervalued aspects of search engine optimization. Youve probably spent a huge amount of time working on pages of original content, keyword density and getting incoming links but never once spared a thought for a sitemap...
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